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actually I'd say that in recent years the exact opposite seems to have become true (well, not the "much, much" part...I wouldn't necessarily buy that with the argument in either direction)

There is no standard and there is no point in concerning myself with thinking about alternatives. It is what it is. Sometimes, big money schools are going to get in over more deserving teams. It happens in football all the time, we just don't think about it as much in bball because A) It happens so often and B) there are 64 teams in so if you're on the bubble the likelihood of you making a lot of noise is slim to none, and slim was VCU run.

Also don't think recent years has changed anything. I think mid-majors have played well enough to cement themselves in the tourney with no question so it's nearly impossible to keep them out.

There is no standard and there is no point in concerning myself with thinking about alternatives. It is what it is. Sometimes, big money schools are going to get in over more deserving teams. It happens in football all the time, we just don't think about it as much in bball because A) It happens so often and B) there are 64 teams in so if you're on the bubble the likelihood of you making a lot of noise is slim to none, and slim was VCU run.

Also don't think recent years has changed anything. I think mid-majors have played well enough to cement themselves in the tourney with no question so it's nearly impossible to keep them out.

your point about "standards" seem to be relative to evaluating coaches though...I was curious what the "scientific" way to evaluate them is.

as for tourney selection, the fact that there have been arguments both ways in recent years is enough to have me unconcerned about any bias in either direction...the bubble is always going to be controversial and the teams there will never have a shortage of arguments for both why they should and shouldn't be in

No matter how you look at it, IMO VT got screwed once, perhaps twice, by the committee. But to be fair, CSG coached his ass off to get us there.......but it may have also been him being our coach that prevented us from being selected too. That is sick irony. I thought he accomplished a lot while coaching here....beat a couple #1s, put us in the top half of the ACC more often than not, and beat Duke & UNC on their homecourt. He had no fear...and that is why I liked him. But I understand that his time at VT probably needed to come to an end too.

Originally Posted by Pylons

your point about "standards" seem to be relative to evaluating coaches though...I was curious what the "scientific" way to evaluate them is.

as for tourney selection, the fact that there have been arguments both ways in recent years is enough to have me unconcerned about any bias in either direction...the bubble is always going to be controversial and the teams there will never have a shortage of arguments for both why they should and shouldn't be in

"Never mistake this message board for the real world. It's Fantasy Island and it has more Tattoos than Texas has cowpies. But it is high entertainment."-- Ancient Hokie

No matter how you look at it, IMO VT got screwed once, perhaps twice, by the committee. But to be fair, CSG coached his ass off to get us there.......but it may have also been him being our coach that prevented us from being selected too. That is sick irony.

if him being our coach was a factor in not being selected (I'm assuming you're referencing "certifiably insane") that's not ironic, that's stupid...on both the committee's part and on Seth's part

Originally Posted by Hokie Flyer

I thought he accomplished a lot while coaching here....beat a couple #1s, put us in the top half of the ACC more often than not, and beat Duke & UNC on their homecourt. He had no fear...and that is why I liked him. But I understand that his time at VT probably needed to come to an end too.

if him being our coach was a factor in not being selected (I'm assuming you're referencing "certifiably insane") that's not ironic, that's stupid...on both the committee's part and on Seth's part

When it comes to "politics," sometimes you have to throw logic out the window because it will make them do questionable things sometimes. Then again often it is about "splitting hairs" when deciding who is in or who is out and so far no one has been able to come up with the perfect formula to decide who qualifies as an at-large team.

Before his VCU final four run we most certainly could have hired him or someone more qualified than JJ. He's a good coach is is doing his job turning this team around but I'd rather shell out the money and go high profile and win now. Bruce Pearl, Bruce Webber, Frank Martin, were all available when we took JJ. I think we are just spinning our wheels until we see what JJs got next year but I don't think he can elevate the program like a high profile coach

I never really looked into it/asked about it but I was talking with a friend last night about it and got curious. His theory was missing out on both Curry boys pissed the wrong people off. I really don't even remember if their was an official reason behind it, but I figured people on here would know more about the situation.

There wasn't one single cause, it was really the outcome of many things that had been accumulating over the years. The athletic department thing that Greenberg missed just before his firing is fairly public knowledge (even mentioned in this thread). Keep in mind, it was a meeting for the entire athletic department that was laying out framework of how everyone in the VTAD is one cohesive unit, everyone from Frank Beamer to the swimming coaches (or whatever). The only one absent from this cohesion meeting was Greenberg, which he missed on purpose in an attempt to belabor something about which he'd been arguing with Weaver for months, regarding transportation and budgets for recruiting. It's correct to say that was the last straw. For probably almost all of us, if you tried to do that with your boss (who was also effectively the CEO), it would probably be the ONLY straw.

But, like I said before, this was a cumulative effect. I think TSL has mostly accepted the idea that Greenberg is charismatic when important people are watching, but he's not when he THINKS they're not. So, it's at least partly Seth's fault when he fails to hit the "charisma on" switch because he doesn't realize he's talking to someone who's anywhere from Diamond Hokie to Silver Benefactor (silver is the highest at which I heard this kind of story). Now, there were two Greenberg problems in this vein--the first being Seth, which was already discussed, and the other being Karen, who is rarely mentioned. Where Seth at least had the good sense to turn on the charm for a lot of things, Karen's switch was almost permanently stuck in the off position, and she loved letting people know exactly who she was. So, donor satisfaction with Greenberg continues to erode in no small part because he won't/can't get his wife to knock it off and stop giving him a bad name. A lot of those donors tolerated it for a while, because the basketball team was competitive in the ACC, even beating UNC and Duke with more frequency than expected. Their support for him was only as deep as the team's win total, though, and when the team went in the tank his last season (senior-laden team, no less), they'd had enough of it.

To summarize, you basically had a course of events that looked like this:

Donors slowly getting fed up with (the) Greenberg(s)
Slightly higher-than-normal player attrition, some players who don't leave look like they're giving less effort for the coach the more years of experience they have
Significantly above-average assistant coach attrition, some making lateral or backwards moves, even for less pay
Corollary to #2, senior-laden teams plays terribly, ends up in the bottom of the ACC
Greenberg defies his boss (and the rest of Merryman) to make a petty point in a months-long argument

What are you going to do when faced with that? You've already got mounting negativity around the guy from others in Merryman, donors, and former assistant coaches. There's only one person in Merryman who MIGHT be "above" the AD, and that's Beamer. For the sake of maintaining order in the athletic department as a whole, you either have to extremely harshly reprimand that openly defiant guy, or fire him. With the previous negativity taken into consideration, firing Greenberg was the obvious choice.

I can promise you this, though. Every involved party is happier since Greenberg left. The only unhappy people are the fans who look at the basketball team's record and commit the post hoc fallacy.

JJ isn't rat face he couldn't hold his jock strap. JJ is an assistant coach hired because our old AD, a great Ad may I add, was a cheapskate and knew it wouldn't be his problem soon. Now he's a head coach for one of the not so good teams in the ACC.

No matter how you look at it, IMO VT got screwed once, perhaps twice, by the committee. But to be fair, CSG coached his ass off to get us there.......but it may have also been him being our coach that prevented us from being selected too. That is sick irony. I thought he accomplished a lot while coaching here....beat a couple #1s, put us in the top half of the ACC more often than not, and beat Duke & UNC on their homecourt. He had no fear...and that is why I liked him. But I understand that his time at VT probably needed to come to an end too.

Lets not pretend that we didn't give the committee plenty of ammo to reason their way into leaving us out year after year. We had BAD losses each and every year that held us down. Like, unfathomable no excuses kind of losses. Yes, we had those late season wins, but if you're also dropping games against teams in the 200 RPI or even playing them to the buzzer, you really don't have THAT much room to complain when you're left out. Especially when some of those bad losses were immediately following some of those big wins. You can say what you want about the teams with big names always making it in, but those teams just don't lose those kinds of games. They routinely take care of business. I mean heck, even in the one year we did go to the tournament, we had a chance to clinch the ACC regular season title at home in the last game of the year, and we choked against a bad Clemson team that finished the ACC regular season with a losing record, dropping us down to the 4 seed in the ACC Tournament.

"I love it when you guys try to write off a Frank Beamer team -- no one is going to win this conference without Virginia Tech having some sort of say in it." - David Cutcliffe

Duke was the reigning ACC Champs coming off an Elite 8 appearance when Bill Foster retired and they hired Coach K. This was also 2 years removed from a NCAA Championship Game appearance. And even with that said, and all the incredible momentum Duke had when they hired Coach K, they tanked it the next 3 seasons before Coach K got things back under control and made them who they are now.

I keep seeing this comparison made all the time on here. Coach K walked into an already name program with an established history that just couldn't get over the hump. Bill Foster was a great coach for the Devils, and Coach K continued the momentum he built and now Duke is where they are. The team was already at an incredibly high level when he got there. He didn't have to rebuild anything. Those of you comparing JJ to Coach K are expecting JJ to do things that even the hall of fame quite possibly the best coach of our generarion never had to do. Thats a completely and utterly unfair comparison thats expecting the impossible out of JJ.

"I love it when you guys try to write off a Frank Beamer team -- no one is going to win this conference without Virginia Tech having some sort of say in it." - David Cutcliffe